Category Archives: Howard’s Heroes

Red Sonja (1985) | Richard Fleischer

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An unofficial spinoff of sorts to the Conan franchise, Red Sonja starts off with Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen) as an attractive farm girl that evil lesbian Queen Gedren of Berkubane (Sandahl Bergman) finds fetching enough to invite over.  Sonja finds the offer so repulsive she ends up giving the queen’s face a nasty gash. Spurned, Sonja’s family is soon murdered by Gedren’s army, while they also destroy her home and she ends up raped by Gedren’s soldiers.

Gedren seeks a powerful talisman, which grows stronger the more exposure it has to light, enough to destroy the world if left unchecked within a couple of weeks. Gedren has the all-female guards (only women can touch it) at the temple protecting the talisman massacred and takes it for herself.

After a forest spirit grants her great abilities to wield a sword, Sonja vows revenge, soon going off to the Orient to train with the masters on sword fighting, who end up giving her a powerful sword. On her quest, she meets a mysterious stranger named Lord Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a protector of the Order of the Talisman, who tells Sonja about her dying sister, who took an arrow to the back from one of the Queen’s soldiers. In her sister’s final words, Sonja gets a mission to stop Gedren’s quest to use the talisman to destroy the world, and she has fourteen days to do it.

Richard Fleischer directs this Dino De Laurentiis production.

Conan the Destroyer (1984) | Richard Fleischer

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Power-hungry Queen Tamaris of Shadizar (Sarah Douglas), who offers Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) a bargain. Taramis will resurrect his dead lover Valeria upon completion of a special mission. He is to assist with the protection of her niece, a young virgin princess named Jehnna (Olivia d’Abo). Jehnna travels with her bodyguard Bombaata (Wilt Chamberlain), to venture into the mystical castle to retrieve a key in the form of a magic jewel called the Heart of Ahriman that, by prophecy, only someone who bears the distinctive mark like Jehnna can touch. This key will unlock a fabled horn that promises to bring the dormant ‘dreamer god’ Dagoth to the mortal realm.  The twist is that, at the end of the quest, Jehnna is a sacrificial offering to Dagoth, and Conan and his friends shall die as well.  These friends include the great wizard Akiro (Mako), the agile warrior Zula (Grace Jones), and Conan’s comical sidekick, Malak, the thief (Tracey Walter). Richard Fleischer directs.

Conan the Barbarian (1982) | John Milius

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The setting of this fantasy-adventure based on Robert E. Howard’s literary creations is the Hyborian Age, a fictional period invented by Howard, around 10,000 B.C. It is a time of magic, madmen, and mercenaries, and barbarians who kill before they end up killed. The film starts with Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as a young lad in Cimmeria, orphaned at the hands of an evil snake cult-leader and a black-magic sorcerer named Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), and becomes a slave.  As he grows, he soon fights in an arena for sport and becomes very good at what he does.  Soon, he escapes and uses his freedom to seek revenge on the man responsible for the murder of his parents, with some help from new friends he meets along the way. Sandahl Bergman, Gerry Lopez, Mako, and Max Von Sydow co-star. John Milius directs. Milius and Oliver Stone script.